Stonewall gets a coat

Mounted on a pin vice, two thin coats of primer (first a layer of Krylon white then Rustolem ultimate finish. Not that these are special, they're just what I had.) When first starting out painting, its often tempting to start with a black primer. There is nothing wrong with this. I used black primer for a long time, but I also used it as a crutch. On a finished painting, the primer should never ever ever EVER be seen. Its not a cheap way to get your figures all black or white before picking out details. The color of primer will have great effect on the final tone of the colors you choose. White primer will make the colors much brighter, while black primer can convey a mellow but intense tone. Both have advantages. Since the overall color of Stonewall here will be fairly realistic, I went with a white primer so my palette wouldn't need any kind of modification.

You can see on this last photo where the Green Stuff filler went. I unfortunately am a better painter than a sculptor, but in this hobby you need to be a bit of both. I didnt clean the green stuff properly, but fortunately this picture was taken after only the first coat, so I went back and smoothed out the filler before the final primer coat.

The workspace.

Here we have the first layer of the grey. The paint color is Vallejo's "Pale Grey-Blue", with a touch of matte medium to keep the pigment from separating too much, because it was watered down to the consistency of skim milk. This is necessary to prevent brush strokes from staying in the dried paint as well as clogging up detail (what we called Boatswain Welding back in The Guard)

While I'm using a single color, I went ahead and used my usual wet-palette to ensure good moisture. You can purchase them at art retailers, but since I love money and hate giving it away, I made my own out of a Rubbermaid container, a simple yellow sponge (spongebob style) and non-stick baking paper cut into strips, then filled with distilled water. Works wonders, and is a lot cheaper than commercially made versions (including Privateer Press' overt attempt to rip you off)

You can see the increasingly darker grey with subsequent layers above. Now that the grey is dried, You can see here I'm staging for the base fleshtone.

Flesh of any ethnicity is probably the hardest thing to paint (well... that and Yellow, since yellow pigment is so damned finicky) and is really a unique mix of purples, blues, reds, and peaches. I swapped to a dry palette since I'll be immediately making a tint and shade of the base tone.

Hair Dryer repurposed to speed drying times (until the next tiem there is a damp hair in need of immediate application of a warmed handheld zephyr)

Beginning the pre-highlights. The shade is really just a visual aid at this point to help with application of the successive highlighting later.

and the tinting, the lighter shades to indicate brighter spots.

nearly done

The finished pre-highlighting. This is the current state of Stonewall, and I am ecstatic with how its going.